Child labour in cocoa production

Controversial use of children in the production of cacao beans

Child labour is a recurring issue in cocoa production. Cote d’Ivoire (also known in English as Ivory Coast) and Ghana, together produce nearly 60% of the world's cocoa each year. During the 2018/19 cocoa growing season, research commissioned by the U. S. Department of Labor was conducted by NORC at the University of Chicago in these two countries and found that 1.48 million children are engaged in hazardous work on cocoa farms including working with sharp tools and agricultural chemicals and carrying heavy loads. That number of children is significant, representing 43 percent of all children living in agricultural households in cocoa growing areas. During the same period cocoa production in Cote d’Ivoire and Ghana increased 62 percent while the prevalence of child labour in cocoa production among all agricultural households increased 14 percentage points. Attention on this subject has focused on West Africa, which collectively supplies 69% of the world's cocoa, and Côte d'Ivoire, supplying 35%, in particular. The 2016 Global Estimates of Child Labour indicate that one fifth of all African children are involved in child labour. Nine percent of African children are in hazardous work. It is estimated that more than 1.8 million children in West Africa are involved in growing cocoa. A 2013–14 survey commissioned by the Department of Labor and conducted by Tulane University found that an estimated 1.4 million children aged 5 years old to 11 years old worked in agriculture in cocoa growing areas, while approximately 800,000 of them were engaged in hazardous work, including working with sharp tools and agricultural chemicals and carrying heavy loads. According to the NORC study, methodological differences between the 2018/9 survey and earlier ones, together with errors in the administration of the 2013/4 survey have made it challenging to document changes in the number of children engaged in child labour over the past five years. A major study of the issue, published in Fortune magazine in the U. S. in March 2016, concluded that approximately 2.1 million children in West Africa "still do the dangerous and physically taxing work of harvesting cocoa". The report was doubtful as to whether the situation can be improved significantly.

Income from the cocoa industry for small cocoa farmers is not stable because when the market price of cocoa is low, the price paid to each link in the industry decreases and cocoa farmers who produce raw products get very little in the chain. To keep the cost of cocoa low, cocoa farmers seek the cheapest labour to make a profit. In Africa, a cocoa labourer can only make less than 2 dollars per day, which is below the poverty line. Child labourers between the ages 12 to 15 in the cocoa industry work as much as an adult labourer, but they are paid less than adults. Children in cocoa growing areas face the realities of rural poverty (scarcity of land, food insecurity, lack of education infrastructure, access to potable water, poor health services, etc.). The regular practice of children working on cocoa farms is often a natural way of life for cocoa farmers who, for a variety of reasons, want to train their children and at the same time use them to reduce labour costs on the family's farm. Not all work that children do is child labour. Work done that is not detrimental to children's health, development or schooling is beneficial because it allows children to develop skills, gain experience and prepare them for future positions; However, this does not mean they are not exposed to hazards, and, beyond these situations, illegal and exploitative practices also exist. Studies suggest that in Ghana and Cote d’Ivoire's cocoa sector roughly 1% of children in child labour could be in, or at risk of, forced labour. The United Nations declared 2021 as the International Year for the Elimination of Child Labour, and declared 5 September to be "Labour Day".

In 2021, several companies were named in a class action lawsuit filed by eight former children from Mali who alleged that the companies aided and abetted their enslavement on cocoa plantations in Cote d’Ivoire. The suit accused Barry Callebaut, Cargill, The Hershey Company, Mars, Mondelez, Nestlé, and Olam International, of knowingly engaging in forced labour, and the plaintiffs sought damages for unjust enrichment, negligent supervision, and intentional infliction of emotional distress. In June 2020, the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit unanimously found that state product labeling laws did not require Nestlé, Mars Inc., or the Hershey Company to disclose on chocolate wrappers if the ingredients used were produced by forced child labor.

In Ghana, the cocoa industry began in the late 19th century and in Côte d'Ivoire it began in the early 20th century. Ghana became the largest cocoa producer in the world in 1910. In the 2018–2019 growing year (which runs October through September), 4.78 hundred thousand tonnes of cocoa beans were produced. African nations produced 2.45 million tonnes (69%), Asia and Oceania 0.61 million tonnes (17%) and the Americas 0.48 million tonnes (14%). Pods are harvested at multiple times during the harvest season because they do not all ripen at once. Mixing and applying chemicals can be hazardous due to pesticide contamination, especially because no protective clothing is worn during application. Clearing vegetation and harvesting pods can be hazardous because these tasks are often done using machetes, which can cause lacerations. A survey conducted by U. S. Department of Labour indicates that in 2005, 92 percent of children between the ages of 5 and 15 are involved in heavy load carrying work in the cocoa industry, which can cause open wounds. Transport of the wet beans can also be hazardous due to long transport distances and heavy loads; hernias and physical injuries can occur.

In the 2000s, some chocolate producers began to engage in fair trade initiatives, to address concerns about the marginalization of cocoa labourers in developing countries. Traditionally, Africa and other developing countries received low prices for their exported commodities such as cocoa, which caused poverty to abound. Fairtrade seeks to establish a system of direct trade from developing countries to counteract this unfair system. One solution for fair labour practices is for farmers to become part of an agricultural cooperative. Cooperatives pay farmers a fair price for their cocoa so farmers have enough money for food, clothes, and school fees. One of the main tenets of fair trade is that farmers receive a fair price, but this does not mean that the larger amount of money paid for fair trade cocoa goes directly to the farmers. The effectiveness of fair trade has been questioned. In a 2014 article, The Economist stated that workers on fair trade farms have a lower standard of living than on similar farms outside the fair trade system.

2019 research from the International Cocoa Initiative found a strong correlation between higher quality education and lower prevalence of child labour. ICI found that in the communities with the highest quality of education score, child labour prevalence stood at 10%, or 66% lower than in the communities with the lowest quality of education score.

To combat child slavery in cocoa production, in 2001 US Representative Eliot Engel introduced a legislative amendment to fund the development of a "no child slavery" label for chocolate products sold in the United States. Senator Tom Harkin proposed an addition to an agriculture bill to label qualified chocolate and cocoa products as "slave free". It was approved in the House of Representatives by a vote of 291–115, but before it went to the Senate the chocolate makers hired former senators George Mitchell and Bob Dole to lobby against it, to remove child forced labour from the industry by July 2005.

The chocolate makers were to create programs in West Africa to make Africans aware of the consequences of child labour, keeping their children from an education, and child trafficking. The primary incentive for the companies' voluntary participation would be the addition of a "slave free" label. and all parties agreed to a three year extension of the Protocol. This extension allowed the cocoa industry more time to implement the Protocol including creating a certification system to address the worst forms of child labour for half of the growing areas in Côte d'Ivoire and Ghana. By 2008, the industry had collected data from over half of the areas, as required, but they did not have proper independent verification. In June 2008, the Protocol was extended until the end of 2010. At that time, the industry was required to have full certifications with independent verifications. The resolution was criticized by the International Labor Rights Forum for having no legally binding measures and two major chocolate manufacturers claimed they were addressing the problem. Companies who claimed to be addressing child labour were asked to provide evidence for this and were scored according to whether their reports were external or internal, whether just numbers or actual impact was measured, and how recently the study was undertaken.